Ljubinko Zivkovic

If anybody in modern music is taken as a stereotype of the genius/weirdness combination it is late Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett, a founder and brief mailman of Pink Floyd, solo artist, painter, and recluse - often most of these things at the same time....

Sometime during the Twentieth century, a musician, born somewhere in Alabama as Herman Poole Blount, rounded up his outlook of the World, or more precisely at the Universe, life, and music, and found in himself that he is actually Sun Ra....

Claudine Longet, a French singer/actress who got somewhat famous, but also infamous, in the US has been almost all but forgotten by the general public. But there’s a lot to her story, from her marriage to the '60s superstar Andy Williams, friendship with Bobby Kennedy, a prominent murder trial, and more....

Albert Ayler, never getting the wider recognition he truly deserved, unleashed a free-form musical exploration that went beyond the boundaries of jazz or any other music that included everything he experienced musically – from church spirituals, New Orleans and Army brass music, to world folk forms, to free improvisation – any and all of these themes, often all at the same time....

Skip Spence - Canadian born songwriter, singer, guitarist, drummer (and a few other things), in many ways represents the essence of psychedelic weirdness, with all the brilliant music it produced as well as all personal pitfalls that came along with it....

The number of pop artists that have chosen to go avant-garde is extremely small, but none went so far as Noel Scott Engel, a guy from Ohio better known as Scott Walker. The British daily “Guardian” aptly put it, he is “Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen.”...

A single mind that actually kicked the whole musical tribute concept into fifth gear - Hal Willner, the 62-year old producer/arranger/composer/event manager. Now, Willner did not invent the tribute concept, but Amarcord Nino Rota, from 1981, the first tribute album he conceived and produced practically started the musical tribute process....

Julian Cope, a guy who once titled an album "Too Freud To Rock and Roll, Too Jung To Die", has a list of things he’s done or is doing, besides playing music, probably as long as anybody’s arm. Whether he's been able to turn himself into a mythological figure may not be certain yet, but he is certainly running close. Oh, and mythology is definitely one of the things he dabbles in, with dabble being an understatement....

From a child prodigy, to rock producer, to leader of the first truly integrated rock/soul/funk band, and author of some of the best modern music and two of the best rock/soul/funk albums around, Sly Stone's life and musical story is a sadly unfinished one full of 'what-ifs.'...

In 1967, Arthur Lee and his then stable band, Love, came up with Forever Changes - widely considered to be their, and one of rock’s greatest masterpieces. While making some impact in Europe, in particular England, at the time, the album was practically ignored in the US. Now, 50 years later, the album is being recognized for what it is (even by Rolling Stone, who missed its greatness the first time around)....

Whether John Fahey intentionally shied away from 'success' is a debatable thing, he himself, in one of his famous quotes said - “from a social perspective, I am looking for friends, not acolytes.” But his musical, visual, verbal, and even eccentric legacy remain, as they should be....

Most of the big names like Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, and Simon Frith are still around; somewhere in columns in established cultural magazines, books, and even academia. But it seems that their style of integrated cultural, musical and sociological analysis that at the same time deconstructs and reconstructs certain musical work is less and less visible. What has happened?...

Smile was to be the title of the 12th Beach Boys album that was to be released anywhere between January and June 1967. It was to be their masterpiece. Actually, it was supposed to be THE rock and roll masterpiece, better than anything The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix or Bob Dylan came up with. But then...it never came out....

How do you go from a #1 hit and being one of the most successful so-called blue-eyed soul artists and considered the progenitor of power pop by ecstatic critics, to never really making a success story out of it, to a patchy solo career and odd-jobs, then back to being a producer and musical encyclopedia of rock and roll, to almost fully rehabilitating your career by the end? Well, you would have to ask Alex Chilton, the man from Memphis who went through all of that - that is, if he were still with us....

Reissue music labels, some old, some new, seem to be gaining in prominence. The reasons for that are both artistic and commercial. CDs are on their way to joining 8-track cartridges and cassettes, vinyl records are having yet another comeback, and more and more indie labels are popping up to rescue what they consider artistically valuable material from obscurity....

Spiritual jazz, a genre born in the '60s and closely tied to that times' political, social, and cultural climate is experiencing a resurgence of sorts, is it again reflecting the moment we live in? We exam the genre's roots and its ever expanding horizons....

Akira Rabelais - a composer/software developer/project manager(?) who exudes mystery and tongue-in-cheek-references in everything he does, makes you walk through forked paths, all inspired by one of his favorite writers, Jorge Louis Borges....

We examine the eccentric life of the cult legend, Captain Beefheart. His life was full of stories about his many idiosyncrasies and while many regard him as a musical genius, it was his paintings under his real name, Don Van Vliet that brought him wide success....

Waiting Around, the sophomore album from John Stammers that took 6 years to make is finally here and it may just mark the resurrection of the sub-genre 'jazzy folk' that has roots all the way back to the 50's....